Pack light. You don’t need all those meds to travel.

When people ask me what I do to take care of my health when traveling, my answer has been the same for the past two years: get a good travel health insurance and pack enough Chaga Earth organic Chaga tea bags for the length of time you’ll be gone. Nine out of ten times I get a lot of blank stares. In people’s minds, they think they have to travel with pills to treat headaches, diarrhea, bacterial infections, etc. All they really need is rest (especially if you’re battling with jet lag) and to boost their immune system before, during, and after their trip.

For the past two years, I have been drinking wild Chaga mushroom tea every day, even when I’m not traveling (and I usually spend half the year on the road). Before that, I used to be the traveler who packed all the medication I thought I couldn’t live without abroad. Obviously, I ignored resting to give my body time to adjust to a new environment (and, yes, the new bacteria I was not used to) and no matter how many pills I took, I would often get sick. And the last thing you need when you’re preparing your conferences for travel writers is a Montezuma’s revenge the night before.

I discovered Chaga tea on one of my trips after listening to a local woman saying she hadn’t been sick in years because of this mushroom that grows on birch trees. Now, when I looked at the said mushroom, I confess I thought I was going to have to take a bite out of it. The thing looks hideous! Then, thank goodness, they told me they made tea out of it and drank it every day. Later, I found out that I could buy the tea bags online. It’s definitely much easier to brew and use that way.